This Week in Startups - Business of superhero films, James Gunn's DC reboot + OK Boomer w/Alex Banks | E1633

Episode Date: December 9, 2022

First up, Lon Harris joins to cover James Gunn's DC reboot (2:14), the business of superhero films (28:18), the top films of the year debate (37:15), and more! Then, Producer Rachel is back with another edition of OK Boomer, featuring through the Noise and Tribescaler founder Alex Banks! (1:21:27) (0:00) J+M tee up today's segments! (2:14) Lon Harris joins the show to discuss DC's James Gunn-led revamp (9:29) Odoo - Get access to all of Odoo's apps, services, and maintenance for under $25 at https://odoo.com/twist (10:37) Lon's thoughts on James Gunn's new DC plan, and what's working in the box office right now (26:44) AgeTech Collaborative - Find out more and apply at https://agetechcollaborative.org/twist (28:18) The business of superhero films (35:40) AgeTech Collaborative - Find out more and apply at https://agetechcollaborative.org/twist  (37:15) Jason reacts to AO Scott's Best Movies of 2022 list (44:19) Lon's top movies of 2022 (58:06) Other ongoing stories at Warner Bros Discovery and HBO Max (1:21:27) OK Boomer: Producer Rachel interviews Through the Noise and Tribescaler founder Alex Banks FOLLOW Lon: https://twitter.com/lons FOLLOW Alex: https://twitter.com/thealexbanks FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood Subscribe to our YouTube to watch all full episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkkhmBWfS7pILYIk0izkc3A?sub_confirmation=1

Hey, everybody, happy Friday. You made it to Friday. We consider Friday the end of the week here at this week in startups. We start up again on Sunday. You get Saturday off. But it is Friday. It is Friday. It is Friday.

You chill. Friday, you work. But really, when we say work, what we mean is spend a really long time talking about movies with our bestie, Lon Harris. So great. The show is for us. We love cinema, TV. is Molly and I love the pop culture.

We love science fiction. I like a rom-com. She does not. I like one. I like two rom-coms. Okay. We're going to talk about those exact, what are those exact rom-coms today?

But there's a lot of news in streaming. Amazon has a TikTok competitor. DC is rebooting the universe. You may lose your Wonder Woman. You may lose your Aquaman. Everything's up in the mix. And then, of course, big debate over HBO's new name, Max, for their streaming services.

to explain why I think this is the best of the worst choices. And then, minds may be changed. And then we end the show with another episode of OK Boomer with producer Rachel, who is interviewing Alex Banks, who's the co-founder of a company called Tribescaler. It's all in this episode. It's going to be a great show. And I go off on A.O. Scott's Top 10 movie list. It is an insane discussion.

And Jason gets out a based. I, it's based J-Cal. Stick with us. This weekend Startups is brought to you by Odo is a fully customizable and fully integrated suite of business apps that lets you build and scale your stack as you build and scale your business. Odoo is now offering all of their award-winning applications, services, and maintenance for under $25. To learn more, go to Odo.com slash twist.

And Age Tech Collaborative. Startups. Your go-to market team is waiting. Age Tech Collaboratives's Hutting Edge Accelerator Program connects you with investors, testbeds, like-minded innovators, and industry expertise. They're taking AgeTech to the next level. Join them at agtechcollaborative.org slash twist. Hey, everybody.

It is Friday. It's this week in streaming. We normally do this on Thursday, but the flow of the news has been a little chaotic. And anyway, Thursday is for the streaming weekend. maybe Fridays are better? I don't know. I like it. It gets you ready for the weekend when you got a whole list.

You leave here with a whole list of show to watch. Yeah. Precisely. Friday's a good TV day. This works for a good TV day. Hopefully we get this out in time. Lon Harris is with us. Follow them on Twitter.

Twitter.com slash L-O-N-S. And you could stump the lawn anytime you like. Just tell him two or three pop culture items you like and he will come back to you. So for example, I said, you know, I love the Rolling Stones. Hmm. And, uh, I love. I love the clash. She's giving me bands now?

Okay. And, you know, I really enjoy the story. You know, I like ensemble cast. So I love Warwick Empire and the Sopranos and ensembles like that. Which, you know, watch next, Lon. Take a second there. I gave you. There's a show that's coming up on Amazon in a few months called Daisy Jones and the Six.

that sounds exactly like what you're describing. It's like a fictional band, like a Fleetwood Mac inspired 70s rock band, and the show is going to follow them on tour. But, you know, like Fleetwood Mac, there's tons of internal conflicts, and they're all dating and betraying one another and sleeping around.

So it's going to be an ensemble sort of drama, but set within a traveling rock band. Sounds exactly like what you were saying. You're a big fan of the Rolling Stones. So there you go. Also, I would mention Rolling Stones, ensemble cast if you're not watching

Slow Horses on Apple TV Plus everybody Just season two just debuted this week Gary Oldman stars based on a series of British novels it's basically MI5 which is like

UK's FBI like their internal MI6 would be James Bond that's their CIA MI5 is their internal police So it's about the agents for MI5 that screw up but they don't fire them

they want to just get them out of the way they send them to a place called Slough House which is like where the reject spies go who they just want to stick in a hole. Gary Oldman is the spy chief who runs Sloughhouse. And so it's just them getting into adventures and having spy cases. Really fun. Like comedy?

It's a dry, very deadpan, very British. It's like a spy thriller, but with a dark, funny sense of humor. And spy stuff. But Mick Jagger wrote the original theme song. So it has a Rolling Stones tie-in. So there you go. Got it. All right.

So that's it. You give him a jumping off point and he's going to get you there. He's going to get you there. All right. The thing I think we have to talk about is either, Molly, and I'll let you hear a lady's choice, tell us which one you think is the bigger story. The DC universe, which we put Lon in charge of, for some reason they put some gun in charge

of it and he made some decisions. Or, in related news, HBO Max, and Discovery. have decided on the name Max for their streaming service. Which should we go for first, Molly? I was really enjoying Lon's tweets about the DC Universe development.

And also personally, even though I thought that Wonder Woman 2 was an abomination, God awful, one of the few unwatchable things. I can enjoy that. I'm so disappointing. Remember, I'm still, hella furious about Wonder Woman 3 being canceled.

So I kind of want to start there. Okay, great. Let's do. So we don't know. What would you have chosen, Lon? It's a lot. I think this is the big. To me, this is definitely the big story.

I mean, everything big, the only stuff we're getting this week is Warner Brothers Discovery, HBO Max, nude. So it all kind of ties in weirdly together. But yeah, I think this is the big story this week. It's not a story yet because really gun and Safra. Peter Saffran, who they're going to co-run DC studios together now. They're basically going to pitch Zazlav this coming week. They've got their presentation.

Here's our vision. Here's where we see this, the DC universe going. And this is all people talk to various, you know, reporters around town and we're getting sort of the preview. Here's where their heads are at. So what this is, what this is making it sound like is that Gunn and Safran want to basically reboot the DC cinematic universe. They're going to move away from these.

Snyder actors and all that Zach Snyder casting that we've had for years and they're going to try to do their own thing. Now there's nothing definitive yet except Wonder Woman 3 seems pretty certain that that's not going to move forward. And there's a little bit of disagreement. Deadline is saying

to me it sounds like Deadline is talking to people from seven bucks, the Rocks Company, and they're telling them, Black Adam did okay. We might have more Black Adam movies and Gunn and Safran's people are like Black Adam also dead in the water. So that may be gone. But the big thing is it sounds to me like what a lot of the article is saying is they're going to try to move away from the Cable, the Mamoa, Galgado, Ezra Miller, that whole wing and try to make it more their own or try to reboot the cinematic universe.

And the real big question mark here is the Flash, because we know that that Flash movie, it has Caval in it. It has Mamoa in it. it's sort of a introduction to the next era of DC films. And if they're not going to move those guys forward anymore, why would you put that in a movie? It just seems like it creates a weird contradiction. But in your tweets,

and it was kind of interesting, you were like, I don't know if I totally understand the strategy of just wipe the slate clean. Like, it does feel a little scorched earth and poor fan service, which we've talked about a lot with these new, you know,

Darth Vader types coming in and basically being like, screw the fans. I don't feel like I would be as definitive. And we don't know. Maybe Gunn agrees with me and it's just this article is making that not clear. But to me, I feel like there's no need to say we're not going to keep Jason Mamoa as Aquaman. Casting a guy to be Aquaman in America and the world loving him was a huge gamble. Like, lightning might not strike twice. Why would you risk it? People spent a billion dollars to go see Jason Mamoa as Aquaman. You've got another Aquaman movie coming out, just keep him in your back pocket. You don't need to

greenlight Aquaman three next week, but if you're making another movie in a year and there's a scene that it would be cool of Aquaman shows up, why wouldn't you want to be able to get on the horn with Jason Momoa and be like, hey, show up for these three scenes. It gets people excited, you know, it gooses the audience. So yeah, like, it seems weird that you would say, we're going to just, these guys are done and we're starting over. That just riles people up unnecessarily when you could just do something like Joker or the suicide. You could sort of reboot it anyway. You don't have to declare it ahead of time.

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Get more done in less time for a fraction of the price with O-Doo. Your plan, as previously stated, when I, you know, latterly put you in charge, was to run a multiverse. Right. Now, of course, Zazlov is truly in charge. But, you know, we'll see how this goes. There might have been a case for me to actually be put in charge of this company. And to let you pursue the multiverse version of this, which is, hey, you have the Snyder verse, Patty Jenkins verse.

You've got the Robert Patterson verse. And then you've got whatever. Joker with Todd Phillips, which is, you know, they've got their own Joker. They've got their own Harley Quinn now. I mean, that's the other question mark is Margot Robbie. Harley Quinn, we know James Gunn had her in his The Suicide Squad movie. Is she gone forever? Or is Lady Gaga our new Harley Quinn?

Are we going to recast Harley Quinn? There's tons of these kinds of questions. I mean, to move Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. I'm stepping away from the business for a moment to be a fan because that would just be so stupid. And well, the other interesting wrinkle there is Margot Robbie, because she's doing press right now for Babylon. She's in the new Damien Chiselle movie that opens a few weeks. So she's doing press. They've just been asking her about this.

And she had this very interesting, you know, quote where she's been talking about, she's been pushing DC to have a Harley Quinn Poison Ivy team up movie because they're dating in the comics. And so she was like, I'd like, Parsons Ivy should be Harley Quinn's girlfriend in the movies and they do a team up movie. So when she first said that, people were reading that as like, oh, she's pitching this to Warner Brothers and she's trying to get the audience excited about it as part of the pitch. But now you could almost read it as if she thinks she's out, she's retroactively being like, well, here's what I wanted to do. They wouldn't let me, you know? Like she's kind of, it's politicking it after the fact now that she knows she's not going

to be Harley Quinn anymore. Okay, so this is my point. Here's what's happening. In a power vacuum, people start going after power. You have the rock, very powerful force in the universe, who aligned himself with Henry Kavali. Is that he pronounced his name? Danny Garcia, the guy who runs seven bucks with the rock and is the man, the rock's manager is also Henry Cabell's manager.

So that's straight up just the business. That's financing. They're trying to get. Right. They're trying to secure those roles and they want to say, hey, we are a power couple over here. And that's how he wound up in the Black Adam. Black Adam is a failure. it's going to make or lose 50 million, which in the superhero universe is failed.

Deadline and Dwayne are sort of trying to dispute that, but I don't feel like their numbers. Either situation, plus or minus 50 for a profit or loss, for a tent pole is a failure. There is only one success, and that's making over $100, $200 million in profit. Anything else is a failure. You would agree with that long? I agree with that. level. I agree. Not only do I agree with that, but I think we know what the benchmarks are for like runaway success. When the audience is behind you and they love it and it's a big hit, you get to

600 million, 700 million, a billion globally. I mean, you know, we've seen Aquaman did it. The Batman has, you know, like movies can do it. So the fact that Black Adam didn't get there. That's it. People didn't connect with the character. The story wasn't, I liked it. My kids liked it. It just wasn't a break-out. I thought. I thought. it was fun. I really like Pierce Broson and his Dr. Faye. That's an old DC character. I'm a big fan of it. He nailed it. Yeah. Then you have Patty Jenkins.

She's going for hers. And now I'll just wrap up my power that. Sorry. The concept here. You got Patty Jenkins and she's pulling the Wonder Woman card. Wonder Woman is arguably the best character to come out of this whole thing. In my opinion, if I had to pick my top three out of this whole thing, it's Wonder Woman. And

Wonder Woman. And then Aquaman? Yeah. And then I guess I go Batman and Mabry, you know,

the Henry Cavali or whatever his name is, he's kind of boring. He's kind of boring, super flat, no offense. So great a mission impossible. I think that's his best role.

Perfect. Also, did you guys ever see that Guy Richie's the Man From Uncle movie? I highly highly recommend. This is not get, you know,

Man From Uncle was like a 60s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They totally can't be. That was fantastic. Guy Ritchie did a movie version a few years ago with Henry Cavill as Napoleon Solo and the disgrace now disgraced Army Hammer as the other main role. And it's super good.

Time for salesperson. Yeah. Yeah. It's right. Exactly. Cayman Islands Timeshare Chief Army Hammer. Yeah. Probably not as fun to watch now.

Now, Barney Robbie is going for her power play. Mm-hmm. And by the way, just on your point, I can tell you, young people are obsessed with the love affair between Harlequin and Ivy. This is the lesbian theme for a lot of young people. This is a major thing that people are talking about in middle school and high school. It's also like there's a cartoon version. Right. That they're together on the animated show. And on the animated show, they're kissing, I think. And so kids are, well, I mean, we didn't have anybody kiss on it on a cartoon superhero show when we were kids. So I guess this is meant 14.

No, the Harley Quinn show is like, it's like a family guy. It's like purposefully raunchy, an adult. It's not, it's not for kids. It's not for kids. Yet my kids are watching it. So I'm going to have to go do some policing. I think your kids are of the age where they can watch. It's not, you know, like, yes.

In a feel like horrible or moral or violent or anything. It's just, you know, it's wrong. I think that James Gunn is looking at this saying, I'm going to have to exert some power here. And if I am in charge, we're going to clean the slate. Starting from zero, here's the plan. Everybody gets to interview for their new job. So basically, I don't think he's going to recast everybody.

I think he's going to say, everything's on the table. Here's the new plan based on what's the big super team-up movie in the DC universe. Well, Justice League. Well, there's Justice League, but wasn't there like their own version of like Infinity or Secret Wars? There's a bunch of different ones that you go to. Usually it involves, we sort of teased in Zach Snyder's Justice League, the character of Darkside, who's from the planet Apocalypse. He's your Thanos. So what you would normally be doing is you would be doing a 10 or 12.

If you wanted to copy Marvel, you do a long franchise that leads into like some kind of apocalypse war storyline. There's a ton of DC team up stuff that deals with that. but any of those. And that's what Snyder was trying to do. He was teasing the anti-life equation and dark side and all that, which was his way of introducing that. So I think that's where now things are screwed up because they told like they teased it, but they didn't kind of get there. So now what is, you know, James going to do?

He's going to pick it up from where Zach Snyder left off and that whole thing is like questionable or does he just start over? I think he starts over. But I do think he lets everybody reapply for their role because you're 100% correct. you're not going to find a better Aquaman in all likelihood. You're not going to find a better Wonder Woman. You will find a better Superman. You will find a better Batman, perhaps.

And- Which one? Which one? I really like the Pattinson movie. It's not a conventional Batman movie, but I dug it. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's my full theory on the whole thing. I think he's just going to come in, exert power, say, here's the, here's the story.

Now, everybody reinterviews. It's sort of like Netflix where they're like, hey, you know what? It's the end of the year. reapply for your job, you know, it's that kind of level of power move. That's, I think, it's power move. It's an old Hollywood thing that the idea being, if you're the new guy brought in to run the studio, it doesn't make a lot of sense to hang on to the previous person's slate. Because if it does well, it doesn't reflect well on you.

It was like, oh, the person who used to have the job did a great job. These are all good projects. But if it fails, everybody's looking at you. Like, what are you doing? Why didn't you cancel that? You screwed up their vision. God. Okay.

It's kind of lose-lose, whereas if you get rid of the Snyderverse and you do the Gunnverse, well, it lives or dies with you. If it's a success, you get, you know, James Gunn looks like a genius. Are we running out of actors for superhero slots is my next question. Yeah. Are we running out of A-list actors? Who hasn't played a role? Ryan Reynolds played two.

Deadpool and Greenlander. Actually, we haven't gotten to this, but they're talking about having MoMAO play some totally different role, this lobo. The discussion is that if they're like to soap up for him, they'll just be like, he's here now. Which could happen. And we've seen several actors have actually done that where they've been one hero and one universe and then they've jumped over and become a, and Ryan Reynolds is the obvious example of green lantern and then. Yeah, exactly. Like assuming, and I don't think that they would, but assuming that any of these actors say no after, you know, if Gunn like alienates them and they're like, no, I don't want to take, you know, on this multimillion dollar role, which I, I, I don't want to take, you know, on this multimillion dollar role, which I, I. I'm sure they would. But assuming that they say, no, like, what do you do? Who is left?

I mean, I guess you just go younger. That woman from Wednesday is like. Yeah, Jenna Ortega, right. Jenna Ortega, you bring her in as new Wonder Woman. Yeah, there's always new actors and up and coming people. And I mean, Stephanie Sue, the girl from everything everywhere all at once, she's going to be in stuff now. And like, you know, there's always those projects that introduce new people. everybody gets excited about.

So I'm not that worried about that. Timothy Shalame, producer Brian says Shalame. What about Molly's idea? What about Molly's idea of going young? I think you just go younger. You started over for a new generation. Like there is this. I mean,

Galgadot is not old. None of these people are old. But when you're, when I hear J. Cal talk about what the middle school said is talking about, like you could imagine them doing a younger Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn movie. Robert Patterson's the younger Batman. Yeah, right, right? He's our path. I mean, I think it really depends on the filmmaker and the project and like, who's the right person for the angle that you want to take.

Because I mean, like, we would usually think, you know, bringing in a guy like Ben Affleck, he's probably too old at that point to be Batman. But that was the Batman story they were telling. He's the old broken down Batman who's gotten cynical. And, you know, like, I think you have to consider those things. And I don't think you necessarily want an all crew of like, it's all Peter Parker's and everybody's 18. I do wonder, and then we should talk about the max. The max, max, max, max. Well, there's so much WV stuff, yeah.

I do wonder from a business perspective, is this the play? Like, sure, Hollywood's about power. Everything's about power and you come in, you're like, I'm new and I'm doing this and whatever. But is there enough evidence that the current, the existing strategy was so bad that it needed to be thrown out wholesale or at least lit on fire and then maybe parts of it will get put out? Like Black Adam, I think is an interesting example. of is it being judged? Is there still pandemic hangover in terms of going to the movies? Like, I just wonder when they look at these metrics and say, oh, Black Adam has failed.

It's like, well, why don't we do we now need to give movies six to eight months on streaming to determine their true success? I think it's a great point. And I think that what this is allowing people to do is play extremely fast and loose. Like whatever argument you're making, you can use the box office now to back it up. because we don't know what average is anymore. And we don't know what, like, James Guns the Suicide Squad and Black Adam and Wonder Woman 2, these movies all performed comparably. So if we're saying the Suicide Squad was good enough to get James Gunn this part,

why wasn't Wonder Woman 2 good enough to get Wonder Woman 3 greenlit? It just seems like you could kind of fudge the rules because nobody has a good sense of what a movie should make. having said that we've got these crazy outliers like Top Gun Maverick makes all these other kinds of arguments kind of secondary because like well it can be done if you get people excited enough they'll show up for Tom Cruise and a jet here's what needs to have maybe we just don't want superhero movies anymore oh I mean that is I've seen people making this case that like if you start to look at the box office post pandemic it does look like maybe the I mean we've certainly seen this I don't know if you could say that about superheroes yet but with

family oriented animated movies, you can't. Like, they were a locked in guaranteed thing five years ago. If you release a big animated movie that appeals to kids, it's going to do well in its first few weekends because parents are just desperate to do something with these kids. Yeah. Today doesn't necessarily work. It's because of the day and the date. There's too many animated films.

And so you can wait it out. There's not the need to go see in Canto in theaters. We just waited. And that one I think was a day and date. That was a day and day. But like Strange World, the new sci-fi animated Disney one is tanking in theaters. And right, people are waiting to catch it on Disney. We can wait.

But I do like to change the case. You know that one, the menu, that Ray Fine movie, that like art house thriller that's out right now? Uh-huh. Yeah. It's like Ray Fine is like a high-class chef and it's like this tasting menu, but then there's something dark and sinister going on. Oh, yes. I did see that.

That movie has outgrow Strange World so far. This Fox Searchlight weird indie. Because grownups want to get the hell out of the house, but parents realize movies have been a rip-off this whole time. I really think there's just going to be a big, and it's going to take us a while to figure out. But the playing field has changed. And a movie like Black Adam is what I like to call my exact favorite kind of movie, where it has a terrible critic score.

Yeah. Like I always look at the critic score in Rotten Tomato and the audience score. And if the critic score is like sub-50 and the audience score is over 75, I know I'm going to love that movie. I mean, it's pretty bad, but it's fun bad. But I'm not going to leave the house for it. I'm going to stream it. So, like, I just think that there's a reshuffle happening. And a lot of these studio decisions are being made, I would argue, potentially on old data.

Okay. And, I mean, I think Black Adam is the kind of movie that would have benefited from people going to a theater who maybe didn't even know what they wanted to see. It was like, that's Friday. Let's go see a movie. Oh, the Rock has that new one out. But if you're not as inclined to just go to a theater anymore. or maybe you don't care that much you'll wait and catch it on a game of

I like Molly's theory here. In a budget conscious recessionary environment, you're already paying for your streaming services, you haven't caught up, there's a glut, it's a supply demand budgetary issue.

You put too much supply, not enough demand, and then you layer on top of it a recession and people are like, you know what, $100 to go to the movies, $0, order in a pizza for, you know,

and take out a pint the hog and das. I'm in for $25 bucks for dinner. And I got to go $150 to go to the movies in dinner. Screw it. I'm saving a buck $25. Yeah. I'm not getting the flu. Like, you know,

I'm just not about it anymore. I'm like, hmm, not worth the exposure. I still love taking my kids to it. I literally look at the showtimes. I work backwards from what's available because I love going to cinema,

but I'm an old guy. We're going to get another fascinating case study in just a few weeks when Disney opens Avatar 2 the way of water. I'm in. That's not a review. You can wait for streaming.

You got to do IMAX 3D. Hey everybody. It's time for a special interview with an old friend of mine Rick Robinson. He is the GM of Age Tech Collaborative which is brought to you by our friends at AARP, which I think correct me if I'm not at 52

as of last week. Am I able to be in AARP now? You are welcome to join. Oh man, you and I got old. What happened? This is amazing. You guys are really excited about engaging the startup community in building technology for folks who are getting up there in age. Yeah, it's really exciting for us developing the H-Tac collaborative to try to put a focus on what we call H-Tech.

And you might be wondering, like, what is H-Tech? Well, it's the intersection of longevity and technology, really. These are health tech companies. These are FinTech companies. These are wellness companies. essentially it's going to be almost every company because the market 50 plus is becoming so enormous that they can't be ignored. And then you've got a lot of people who are supporting that market who can be any age. It's kind of a white space because not a lot of product developers and marketers

and startups and investors have put a lot of focus on this, but it's huge and it's growing. In fact, it's around $8.5 trillion in terms of economic value in the U.S. right now. All right. Thanks, Rick. When you're selling into the 50 plus market having relationship with AARP gives you a bunch of credibility. Of course, in the meantime, you can go learn more about the Age Tech Collaborative at AgTech Collaborative.org slash twist. And join us later in the program and you hear more about the Age Tech Collaborative and how they help innovative startups succeed. I just want to wrap up superhero films with one single chart. And then if you could go down here to the numbers here, Avengers Endgame, Avengers Indie

Four, Superman, No Way Home, all in the two billion. dollar-ish club. Then we go down to the billion-dollar club, numbers four through 13. This tells the story. First three are obviously, you got six billy in the first three alone

in Marvel product. Then you get Avengers, Ultron, Black Panther, Iron Man 3, Civil War, Aquaman, Spider-Man, Spider-Man, Far from Home, Captain Marvel. And then, in number 12, and number 13, in wrapping up the billion-dollar club,

we'll even go to number 14 since it's essentially we'll round up and number 15 or all kind of billion dollar club. DC shows up. Dark night rises, Joker, the dark night. What that shows is Batman is the franchise and a dark Batman wins.

Full stop. The end. I'm just going by performance. Zazlov is looking at this chart. Zazlov is looking at this chart and saying, where are we? Then we go to 15, Dr. Strange.

then Spider-Man, Spider-Man, and then finally, Batman versus Superman Dawn of Justice, Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor, there's your top 20 and 22 Wonder Woman. So, you know, you start looking in the top, the only one that isn't a Batman film for DC in the top 25, I kid you not, is Wonder Woman.

Aquaman. There's two. Aquaman is nine. Yeah. Accomat's Night. So, congratulations. Aquaman, Wonder Woman breaking in, but it's a Batman world. they got to nail these characters.

And an Aquaman world, though, that still came in higher. I'm not, I'm standing up for my boy, Moa. So you have to keep him. That's my point. You have to keep him. You got to keep a great Batman. I feel like you're leaving a lot of money on the table if you don't keep making films with the characters that have proven to be breakout success characters that have captured the public. Yes.

And 27 is the Batman. So what this argues for is Robert Patterson, Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman and Mamoa being Justice League. Am I correct or not? Can you pull that old? You need Wonder Woman. Like, she is Wonder Woman. Can you put Robert Patterson on either side of Gal Gadot and Mamoa?

Yes or not? You'd have a lot of splaining to do there because their Batman was Ben Affleck. And so if you don't get Ben Affleck back, you've got to explain why is there this other Batman. Now, D.C. had a plan. The plan was Michael Keaton. That was the old plan. Remember? They were putting Michael Keaton in the Flash movie.

And they were putting Michael Keaton in that back girl movie that's not happening anymore. And then the plan was they were going to explain he came through a rip in the multiverse. Here's this other universe as Batman. And now we've got a Batman again. But that's off. That looks like if Keaton shows up and Flash at all, it'll just be a one-off cameo. They're not permanently bringing him back. So we got to go with the 40-year-old version of this, the Galgadad.

You could introduce a new guy as Batman. You would just have to explain it. What would the explanation be? He's taken over as Batman? I would say if it were, again, if you came to me and you were like, this is it. This is why you should be in charge of Juan. I would say you set up Terry McGinnis,

aka Batman Beyond from the animated series in the comics and say Bruce Wayne was training a protege we just hadn't met who's ready to take over as the new younger version of Batman. So you kill Affleck and you have him come in. Or retire. You can even have Affleck retire off screen, have him do a vocal cameo if he's willing or something. It's such a simple, easy solution. What about his gun is going to do? He's

young Batman and he's just starting out and boom, there you go. All right. Now we have to go to AOSG. What do you think of it, Molly? You like this plan? Robert Patterson squeaks in. Patton. It's a high risk maneuver. Robert Patton, it's a high risk maneuver. He's got such a specific, his own Gotham

in his own world. I feel like it's weird. I think it would be hard to bring him into that world, especially because you've already set up to a little like love, a little sexual tension with him and Wonderworth Affleck, Batman and Wonder Woman. And also that would be... Isn't Wonder Woman, in fact, a lesbian as well?

I mean, can we just give her that or no? I mean, there is that nice scene with Chris Pine where she talks about how unnecessary men are. There is a... It's been played a lot of different ways throughout the history of the comic books. Historically, she did have a love interest in the old comic, Steve Trevor, but...

I mean, it's true. Steve Trevor's a beard. I think he was always... Also this idea that, well, it's an island that's only populated by women. So do they not have relationships at all on Themisgara? Or if they do, they're women having relationships with women. I mean, of course she's going to try out the hot new thing. She's never seen a man before.

You're going to take that pony out. There's a movie called Professor Marston and the Wonder Women or something like that. That's about the creator of Wonder Woman and all these ideas. You started it. It's true. I did open the door. All right. I want to open and shut this door real quick.

A.O. Scott. I at some point got into it with the film critics at the New York Times where I was like, is this a list of the best international films of the 20th, 21st century or the best films? And they went off on me as being. And I got blocked by like 10 film critics. And they were like, you are a, you know, like it was like a whole like. Like you're in. But I don't want to get into like.

like a woke thing or like a little big thing or whatever. Everybody else can shut up. But I was like, why does the New York Times hate the movies that Americans love? A.O. Scott's job is not to tell you you're the smartest boy who likes all the best movies and make you feel good about yourself. His job is to teach you about movies, especially ones you haven't heard about. There are plenty of the New York Times film critic.

What's the job of the lecture me? What's the job of a film critic? Yeah. Have you been following the, It's to educate and inform you about what's going on in international film. You're not an expert. You're not spending all day watching international movies and learning about what's going on in the international film scene. That's why journalism exists.

That's why you would hire a New York Times chief film critic who's been doing this for decades. And that's his job. He, like, anybody could watch Black Adam and be like, I thought it was good. That's my job. Molly, please, your opinion on this A.S. Got list? taste is absolute trash and that's why I look at audience score over critic score. This is just like the, I was, there's been this like same controversy over the pitchfork

best songs of or best albums of 2022 lists because everybody's like, what is this and it's all just in the whatever. I agree, it is their job to go and be the boots on the ground for all of the stuff that we're not going to go see, but it doesn't have to be there's popular. You're an expert to spend their whole lives watching movies and analyzing movies and then not listen to them when they're like, these are great movies, you might not have heard of that. Let me explain why the two of you are wrong. No, we're not. You unexpected populist you.

I'm not trying to be populist. I am trying to find a middle ground. Hey, everybody. It's time for a special interview with an old friend of mine, Rick Robinson. He is the GM of Age Tech Collaborative, which is brought to you by our friends at AARP. So how does the collaborative work? How do you help companies and investors? kind of access these companies and these markets?

So essentially what we do is we look for companies, we incubate them, we invest in them, and then we bring them into this new environment we call the H-Tech Collaborative Community. So, yes, we have pitch competitions that we run throughout the year, themed, and some of them are open mic style. And it's a way for us to source and find great early-stage companies, usually pre-series A. We invite some of them into our accelerator program, which is extremely high touch,

eight weeks, four times a year, where we bring in aging experts. We help get them best prepared to deliver their product or service to the market. And as I mentioned, we often invest in these companies. And then they graduate into the H-TEC collaborative community, which is an online platform that makes up an ecosystem that we're developing that includes, of course,

the startups, investors, test bed organizations, enterprises, and business services, all in this one online environment. where they can support and draw from one another. Great. So there's an online community people can go visit. They can go visit that at agtechcollaborative.org slash twist.

AgeTech collaborative.org slash twist. And so if you want to build in that market, if you want to sell into that market, if you want to invest in that market, this is a great way for you to partner with AARP, correct? Absolutely. Yep. A.O. Scott is trolling Americans. This is a pure troll. There is a pure troll.

on there. And After Sun and Tar and Flux Cormay, these are not, these are not impossible to find movies. These are, like, tar is rentable on VODD right now. It's on Amazon.

Flux Corme is on Shutter. Okay. The bleeding bloodshed just isn't out yet. It comes out in a few weeks. After Sun is an A-24 movie. It's been playing in theaters. These are not really that obscure. Hold on.

Let me just say this. Molly. Molly. Mm-hmm. I mean, I'm not, no, I'm not going to watch any of these. No. Okay.

No, no. I'm not going to even go to that. I will not. I'm just, the audience needs to hear this list. If you're listening to my voice right now and you watched movies in 2022, you're the person I'm asking this question too. What did you think of A.O. Scott's number one choice, note by Jordan Piel. Okay, you didn't see it.

You didn't see it. I love it. Correct, Molly? Oh, I'm a chicken, but tons of people saw it. Okay, number two, Neptune Far Frost. Frost. It's an indie, sci-fi post-apocalyptic movie about a collective. It's about a collective of hackers who are like trying to take over the

predominant like ruling class? No, it's an American film. And Salt Williams is like a musician. Number three, Mr. Bachman and his class. I'm ready to know that one. I think it's German. Maria Speth, I believe it's a German film. You don't even know it.

Okay. And you think you're in this business. But I'm excited to find out about a movie. I don't know. It's great. I want to watch it. Let me just continue. After son by Charlotte Wells.

What is this film? This is an indie drama from the UK, A-24 release. It's in theaters now. Paul Mescal was in that Hulu series, normal people. He starts it. It's about a father and dog. on a vacation together.

824 is... All the kids are into 824 in that studio. I don't know no bears either. All right. I rest my case. Two of the top five you don't even know. Number six, Tarr. I know about Tarr.

This has got that famous actress in it. It's one of the best performances of the year. Okay, so this is like a whiplash? Is this Whiplash 2.0? No. I'll tell you, you might like it because it does, it deals with like cancel culture, wokenness. I saw the clip.

There's a stunning clip from this where she tells a person, who doesn't want to play Bach because he's a white musician. And he's like, I don't want to play music by oppressive people. She's just like, it's just the best. It's a fascinating character study. Kate Lanchett plays one of the world's most acclaimed composers and conductors. Okay. And it's about her starting off at this position of extreme prominence

at how her prestige begins to slip. Did you see it? I saw it. It's brilliant. It's really brilliant. It's on VOD right now. I can't wait to see it. Lost allusions.

I don't know that one. I don't even know. I've never even heard of Xavier Ginole. Flux Gourmet. Flusqueor May is amazing. It's on Shutter right now. If this guy, Peter Strickland, he also did a movie that I urge you all to check out called Burbarian Sound Studio.

He makes indie, weird, unconventional horror and thriller films. Sounds like Cronenberg? A little bit. A little bit. What is Flux Corme? Artsy horror. Flux Corme is about a group of people that, make soundscapes with food, and it's like they're an experimental collective that works with,

does, like, weird art projects with food, but then it becomes like a horror movie. I don't want to. Yeah. It's very interesting. It's on Shutter right now, highly recommended. So he put a horror film in there or two. That's interesting. All the beauty and the bloodshed.

In Fabric, Peter Strickland, same director that's about a dress that murders the women who wear it. He makes interesting. We're having a little comeback here with this 824. What is all the. Beauty and the Bloodshed number nine? You remember Laura Pontchrist? She did that, what, Citizen Zero? That film, whatever the film was about Glenn Greenwald and...

Yeah, sure. Poitress. Poitress. She was like part... She was part of the big reveal. She was part of the big, the papers, the Snowden story. Yes, exactly. She was one of the producers.

This is her new documentary. She was one of the producers of the whole like Snowden release. I like a good doc. And it's about, this one's about the Sackler family. It's about like the, the owners of Purdue Pharma and their relationship with the artist Nan Golden. I hear it's great. It's not out in like two weeks, but I'm hoping to see it. And then finally, number 10 of Aal Scott's top 10 films of 2022, Down with the King.

Diego on. Yeah, Down with the King is, I've heard of this with too. And this is like, it's like an indie, it's not even a far-a film, I don't think. It's like an indie drama about a rapper. And it's got, you know, Freddie Gibbs. He's like a sort of an indie rap artist, like a very well regarded sort of old school rapper. He's like the star of it. Yeah.

Okay. So now, if the title of this was the best movies you probably didn't see of 2022. But these are a. That's fine. Hold on. Let me make my point, please. I'm a line. You have major point with this entire segment.

You are going to agree with me in 30 seconds. No. This should not be the best movies of 2022 because. it does not represent what actually are the best films of 2022. There is one spectacular film that made people go to the movie theaters by the greatest movie, perhaps the greatest movie star of our generation. How do you put after sun, no bears, lost illusions, and whatever this documentary is above the single cinematic experience of 2022?

I, there's no objective best movie to put it's certainly one of the top five films of the year. Well, there's no objective

does it included films of the year. There's not, it doesn't exist. Whatever you thought were your five favorite movies of the year, those are your top five

best films. The idea that we could somehow take our opinion out and just look at the filmmaking. Here's the thing. People think they can do that. They're like,

oh, but just look at the film make, just the quality of the performance. It's like, you don't know how to evaluate that stuff. You're just watching it. Like, the idea that you can watch a movie and objectively pick apart the skill and the craft with which it was made, everybody's deluded. They're full. Critics can't even do that.

We're all just saying the things we like the best. I'm so irritated right now because on the one hand, I do count on a critic to find me art that I don't know is art that I'm probably not going to watch because I am trash. But art is really important. and I am happy to see something other than a tent pole freaking superhero movie get recognized. And also, Maverick got great critic scores. Like, it would not kill that. I'm talking about this critic.

Both things are true. At the New York time. Where A.O. Scott's very, I think, specifically excluded this particular, like, this movie could have been in that top-tel-list. And it excluded it because they're completely. He's trolling us. His list is garbage. No, I mean, I've tried a lot of outside the box.

That's up from my top 10 list too. Mad God after Yang, saloon. Those aren't mainstream. Wait, wait, you have a top 10 list? Give me the top three? I haven't seen everything yet, but I have a top. I keep a running list all year of my favorite stuff. Just give me your top three that you love.

That you would tell me and Molly and a normal human on planet Earth, you're going to love it. You're going to get mad at me, but I'm going to go. Number one, Mad God. That's Phil Tippett's stop motion animated epic that's on shutter right now. Phil Tippett did special effects for. Star Wars, Jurassic Park. He's a legend in the animation. The wild card. I give you the wild card.

And the visual effects industry. He made a stop motion animated film that's a, like, it's a character exploring like a nightmare, hellish world where all these monsters are like trapped doing manual labor. It's incredible. Number two, this one's on Showtime of a filmmaker named Coreaida. It's called After Gang. And it's with Colin Farrell. It was out like March, April this year. It's sort of near future sci-fi drama.

I heard it. Families in the future can get robots, life-like robots, to like live with them. So it's about this couple. They adopt a child from China, and then they bring in a older, like a boy Chinese robot to be like the older brother of their new daughter

to give her someone who feels like she has a connection to to grow up with. And then the robot malfunctions. And it's about how the fact, deals with this loss that's like, it is a loss, but it's not a human loss. And it's a really fascinating movie. After Yang is your number two. After Yang, number two.

And then the third one, I think I've talked about this before. It's with Rebecca Hall, also on Shudder right now. It's called Resurrection. Rebecca Hall and Tim Roth. I love a Tim Roth. I love a Tim Roth. Thriller. Rebecca Hall is this very successful single mom, very like put together.

Everything in her life is worked out. and then she sees Tim Roth in public and just seeing him brings back something from her past and starts to like unravel her entire life and so we slowly start to unpeel like what's the nature of their relationship and why is she so unnerved by seeing him Rebecca Hall is, I'd like,

I've rarely seen a performance like this in a film. She's unbelievable in this movie. Okay. I like these three. That was that lady's name. Can I ask you a question? Can I ask you a question on before I kick you off the show? Is Top Gun in your top 10?

It is. It's my number 10. So the rest of the top 10 is Nope. Cah, Saloom, Moon Age Daydream, crimes of the future, jackass forever at number nine, and then Top Gun Maverick. Okay, so this is perfect. You don't have to be A.O. Scott. That's a perfect list.

You need to. I'm giving you a third job. Fourth job. This is your fourth job I'm giving. Oh, my God. Number three job. You need to replace A.O. Scott. Because you made a list that's intriguing with Wildcar.

with things that and honest are stunning in terms of performance screenplay or uniqueness but you also recognize that you could have a tub of popcorn and see jackass you could see

a maverick or you could see an animated film a stop motion film and have great joy in the cinematic experience once again Lon you are the best film and pop culture critic on the planet a.O. Scott is garbage the list is garbage he's purposely trolling everybody

and I'm I am disgusted once again with the New York Times. First, Andrew Rorsesorking with that terrible interview, and now this jokester, not even putting Maverick on the list. Nobody go to the New York Times today because you'd be crossing a digital picket line anyway. Thursday, yeah. I'm going to allow this once. Yesterday.

The New York Times is on strike today. Strike on Thursday. This is for Friday. Oh, right. Yeah, it was yesterday. Sorry, folks. Perfect. Here's what happens.

Anybody on strike? Guess what? We're doing a riff. You're on the list. Let's go. Is that legal? Is that legal? I don't think that's really not.

Can you riff the people who go on strike? I'm pretty sure. You can't do that? I feel like the labor board is going to have an issue. Labor loss. Kind of a large labor violation. Yeah. Don't do a labor violation.

But you do need to do a riff New York Times. So for the maniacs who went on strike begging for more from the New York Times, you're in a recession. Wake up people. No. You're lucky to have your job to go to the office, get in early, stay late. No. No. No.

No. Big Rift coming. No. Anybody want to make a bet that New York Times lays people off in the next six months? Who wants to take the bet? I mean, I don't want to take a bet on that. You're betting on people's lives. Would you like to bet Kanye West has a suicide attempt?

Rifts are humans. Yeah, exactly. Just like keep it coming there. Literally, that was one of my group chats. Keep coming there, Joker. Suicide. Yes. It's pretty terrible.

Not a well, man. New York Times reports. I know. We're just like, I know. I think Max is a good name. I'm fine with the name Max. It seems weird to me because HBO is the brand. Max is not a,

Max is not a recognizable brand. Max is a bundle. It's a bundle like Hulu. Like Hulu. iPad Max. Max equals Hulu. That's it. What's really sad about this is the idea

that they want to deprecate the HBO brand. Like HBO. They don't want to dilute the HBO brand is what they're saying, because they're basically this is going to be, they're taking all the discovery channels and jamming them in here. And so they don't want it to be like food network and HBO or identical brands now.

But I still think they're, I think they're wrong. Like I don't, I don't agree with this strategy. I don't think Max means anything to people. I think Warner Brothers means something to people. I think HBO means something to people. I don't think Max means anything to people.

All right. Do you remember Samson's where Homer renames himself, Max Power? Max Power. He's mad with, the name that you want to touch. Yeah, I'm going to rename myself. This is basically that.

Max Power. Let me just give them some cover here. This is a 60-40 decision. It's not an easy decision to me. Because HBO, when you hear that music, and remember the old thing, you know, whatever that sound is. They fly over your name.

So there are those two. There's the where you get the Sopranos. Yeah. Yeah, the static one. The static one. Then there's the da-da-da-da-da-da from the 80s and 90s where they fly over and then you watch a movie. It's awesome. Which, to be fair, it means nothing to anyone because we're old as hell.

No, no, no, no. It's still iconic. I think it's still iconic because of euphoria. HBO, every goddamn show on that network is worth watching. I can't, I'm trying to find a show on there that I said garbage. I haven't said that. No, I don't know. I mean, John from Cincinnati, but you got to go back a little.

Don't even remember it. They've had a few one-offs. I'm just saying I've late. Is White Lotus there's? Yeah, White Lotus is there. Industry is there. Industry is HBO. Is it amazing?

Is industry there's? Industry is HBO there's. Euphoria there's. Euphoria. Hacks. Hacks. Hacks, love. Game of Thrones.

Obviously. House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones. Listen, HBO Max means crafted, beautiful product, thoughtful, worthy of your time, worthy of discussion.

That's what it means. that's not what discovery means and their collection of like home improvement. And so if you really believe long term that HBO stands for something, then you don't want to name an HBO. But what a nice little thing that they did this HBO Max mess

because now they can say, you know what, Max is like Hulu, it's a collection of brands. It's a logical decision in my mind. It's the best of the, it's the best of bad decisions you can make. All right. I'm sold.

I don't buy anything else you've said today, but that one. To build off of that, they're also saying it's going to visually be like Disney Plus. You know how Disney Plus has the hubs across the top? So that when you first arrive, you go, that's what they're going to do as well. So it would be like, do you want HBO shows? Do you want Warner Brothers films? Do you want D.C.? Do you want Discovery reality shows?

Consumers will understand this. Consumers are going to understand it. So, Molly, to be clear. Right, exactly like that top row of hubs. of brands. Yeah. I apologize for based J-Cal on Fridays, but I'm going into a very base weekend.

Number one, if you're striking in a recession, you're probably going to get laid off. Number two, if you give me a woke trolling and you don't include Maverick on the list, I'm going to be based. And- When do you think it's woke? Just don't even. Anyway, please.

I'm sorry, please. I didn't. I didn't mean to. Okay, not woke, but trolling. Okay, I don't, I'm not going to use a trigger word. The word you're looking for. is a feat. It's a litrech.

I mean, I look at two years of French. I don't speak it. It's precious. You know, he goes to every film festival. He sees every big art house film. Like, he's supposed to have those kinds of opinions and those expert takes. There's plenty of people write for the local paper. Who's going to go see, you know, whatever the big movies are this weekend.

And they'll tell you what they liked. It's two different jobs. It could even just be an educated list. I don't know what if we are not because we have not seen. Does that mean like dainty or? precious. Yeah. Precious.

Yeah. I'm not looking for, I'm looking for accuracy between the title and the product. The best films of 2022 should not. Those are his favorite picks for the best films. All right. It should say, it should say,

an elite person's top 22. Yes. Okay. Or self-indulton. It should say a, a feat person's best films of 2022. Having a reflecting. That's what you're supposed to do.

You're supposed to find the whose opinions mirror your own, or at least you find their takes interesting, and then you read them. So maybe you and A. Scott are just not a line. Maybe you're more of a Manola Dargis guy. A pretentious, the 22, most, the 22 best, most pretentious films of 2022. I'm like, most pretentious. They're not pretentious. Come on. He put three films on there. You don't know, Lod. It's a bit pretentious. Is it a little bit pretentious? I don't, I don't go to a single film festival in a year. I'm getting my feet the same way everyone else is. I'm so tilted right now.

I got to let it go. I got a let it go. But I'm tilted about this guy. And not 100% wrong. Like, neither of you is 100% right or wrong. How about that? I'm just going to stay right here in the middle and go like, there isn't a featness about this list.

And also, if I had seen 15, you know, a thousand movies this year at every film festival, it's possible. Maverick might get crowded out. Like, I don't know. All right. I mean, I have one that's high on my list, too, called soft and quiet. nobody's heard of. I just caught it on VOD and it's amazing.

It's out. Wait a second. Is this an NC 17 like? No. It's a it's shot. It's all done in real time. Like it's all it's all shot single take real time. What?

Soft and quiet. And it's about it's a group of women and they're having this meeting that's like we're like minded citizens like a get to know you. Okay. We're going to start this club. And you only realize slowly over the course of the meeting that they are white supremacist. And it is a they're starting. Nazi club meeting.

And then things, it becomes, it becomes a thrower. It's sort of, things spiral very much out of hand. So like mystery horror thriller. It's like a thriller. Like they, things happen. Yeah, it's like a crime thriller that stuff starts to happen and the tension builds and eventually there a violent incident happens and it's just how these women

reaction, but in real time, you know. 88% fresh, but Molly audience score, 58. So this could be a little. Well, it's because it's a, it's one of those movies that it's like, all the characters are awful. They're white supremacists. Right. So you're being sucked into their world and their mindset.

They're Nazis with casseroles. And it's very clever and smart and thoughtful, but it's not like an easy, fun watch. So I could see why the audience score might be like, this was a lot to take. My reviews site, and I think I'm at one point did own this domain, although I may have let it go, is bad, but awesome.com. Like, I know the movies I like are bad. I know, but they are awesome. Yeah. But anyway, that's like, to me, that's so much of the value of a critic is like, I read a review,

and that's how I heard of Soft and Quiet, and then I rented it on VOD, and then I watched. I was like, this is amazing. So if I can pass that on to another person. Okay. Why would not instead of being like, you were right? Tom Cruise is the best. If you put sleepers or ones you may not have heard of, I'm all for it. So Soft and Quiet, what was the sci-fi one you liked and the sci-fi one on AOSCats list?

Because that's in our wheelhouse. Neptune's Frost is the, it's one of the years. Like, if you read a lot of, like, critics list, Neptune's Frost was like a big breakout earlier this year. I'm going to watch that. That looks good. I'm going to watch it.

I believe that one is on, I think you can rent it for like two or three bucks now. It's on Amazon and Apple. What was your other? You had another sci-fi one that you read. Well, I loved Mad God. That's the stop motion one. I really like, after Yang,

that's probably the one you're thinking out. That's on Showtime. You can also rent that one, but that's streaming right now on Showtime. Yeah. Which is called Farrell. It's great. And it's not,

it's not like an art film. It's a drama. It's just a, it's a sci-fi movie. It's like, he's trying to get his robot fixed and nobody can fix it. And people are like,

oh, we'll just get another one if you want one. But it's like, but it's, you know, it's become a member of the family. All right. To watch movies and films, I just started my list on a little notion pitch.

Anything else we have for a lawn here that we need to discuss? Because I think we got through Disney. We got through Max. We got the, The other HBO Max thing is they had said before they were going to, like, Discovery is going to take over the reality show game, and HBO is not going to really produce as many in-house. And we're this week we're starting to see that they canceled almost all the unscripted HBO Max original. So Sweet Life and Legend and like the F Boy Island, those shows are all going away.

All the reality shows will be produced by Zaz Labs old team at Discovery now. Got it. Makes sense. That's the other big change this week. The other thing I wanted to ask you about was this TikTok doing TikTok. I'm sorry, Amazon launched a TikTok review product. It's being shared on Twitter. So inside the Amazon app, I don't have it, but some other people have it.

And I thought this is an interesting thing to bring up because I want to just, as we do this week in streaming every week, Molly, I just think talking about the impact of TikTok because I was watching Reed Hastings was interviewed recently and he kept talking about two things, games. He brought it up five, six, seven times and then he kept talking

about TikTok. And here's Amazon saying, you know what, we're, we are competing in some ways against TikTok for, you know, people's attention. Netflix is seeing this as something with attention. And by the way, Molly, we have to cover this on the news program.

there's two lawsuits out now against TikTok that have just broken in the last I think 24 or 48 hours over programming our kids and the influence it's having and the addictive nature of it. So it's going to put TikTok on our this week in streaming plate in terms of its draw,

but what do you think about commerce plus TikTok plus this Amazon thing? This makes me think those. Did you remember those trend stories about how young people use TikTok for search now. What? Yeah.

TikTok has started replacing Google for like teens because they'll just go search for whatever they're looking for. You know, if you were going to look up, how do I make, you know,

like a recipe or a location or whatever you would be looking up in Google, you could put it into TikTok and it'll just bring up videos about that topic. And then they're so used to swiping through videos until they find what they like. That's become the search mechanism,

whereas us old folks are still tied to more conventional search engines. There's a great example. So to me, this feels like Amazon saw all of these trend stories. It was like, maybe this is how young people would like to shop now as well, instead of going to Amazon.com and typing in pants and then scrolling down pages until you find the pair of pants you like, maybe they want to put pants into TikTok and then swipe until

they see a video of someone wearing pants they admire. Huh. Spooning. Mm-hmm. And then Amazon looks at that and goes, crap. We need to get in that game. Hence, this new product. Yeah.

I mean, to me, that's exactly what it is. If people under 20 are used to doing this as their search engine now and their discovery, this is how they discover new products. Google saw this coming with YouTube. Google bought YouTube in fact because they started to see the percentage of searches, not on search engines, but on the web in general, start to happen there. And then Amazon did this before. Amazon, a lot of people, when they do product search, just go directly to Amazon to search for products.

Obviously, I certainly do. It's a better experience. And then Google launched Google shopping, and it's been trying to monetize that and sort of compete against it. And of course, Amazon launched A9 their failed search engine, then shut it down. So you did have this little, like sort of the battle for the search box. And obviously now you have, in addition to that, you have Apple selling off their search box for web search to Google and making billions.

but they also are now, did you notice in the new version of iOS when you go to your home screen on the bottom? What do you see? Oh yeah, you can search. There's a search bar there now. There's a search bar on the home screen.

So the battle for the search box continues, folks. Something to keep in mind. And Molly, what do you think of this concept? Yeah, I'm surprised that social shopping has taken as long as it has. Like it's been a really interesting, like, slow moving. There are so many times when Amazon could have done this. There are like individual brands that have tried to do a little bit of video.

I think that Amazon is going to have a problem making this consistent across the site. Like, it's really cool. But right now it's, I don't know how you pull this off with all of the third party sellers that you have on Amazon. So you're going to have an inconsistent shopping product. I think that there are, don't get me wrong, I think this kind of social shopping thing is huge, right? I want to see the video. Yeah, here's some great video of this happening.

Pick your categories. But I think like, this is Pinterest already. This is TikTok already. And unless Amazon can really nail this on every single product on Amazon, it's going to be a weird and consistent thing. But also it's the future of shopping, right? It's like a take my money when I see one of these videos. They're also trying to.

to do this right now on Twitch. Same kind of idea. They're trying to, how can we put our e-commerce tools directly on Twitch so that if I have a Twitch channel and I'm like, oh my God, you guys, I just got the best new gaming headphones or you have to get this, whatever, how can I integrate that into the same page so that people don't need to leave their Twitch channel to buy the product and then maybe even the creator gets a 5% kickback or something. Like that specific live streaming social shopping.

is huge in China. There was a whole documentary about it. I interviewed the director like two or three years ago. Massive deal. Yeah. I mean, you know what? Here's the thing.

Amazon knows what I've bought, my history and what I've searched for. So they're going to just be like, here's anchors, TikToks, you know, or their stories. And if I swipe through a bunch of anchor products, I'm going to be buying six a day. I mean,

anything anchor comes up with in terms of charging and cables. I don't know why I have a Fed. for Anchor. You know what I'm talking about, Lon? Anchor, no, I don't. And this is where the producer pull up the Anchor store on Amazon. I mean, Anchor is the best cables, the best charging

stations, the best battery packs. Like accessories. While you're pulling that up, it is genuinely terrifying the idea that I would open Amazon as a content experience and get a whole bunch of videos and I could buy from each one of those videos. Like right now, those BuzzFeed, like, have you ever done the BuzzFeed?

Here's all the Anchor stuff. Look how good. Right there. If you click on that nano three, they have a triple charger that does two USBCs and one regular traditional US. They have these little tiny. This is such a weird sub-subculture to get into. Power really is. Well, it's also the power bricks.

It's also the battery packs. I have the MagSafe powerbacks. I just feel like most people don't put this much thought into recharging. That nano. See that little nano there, Lon? You know how you carry your laptop brick? This thing fits in the palm of your hands, 60, 90, 120 watts, high-speed charging.

You go travel around the world. I do like a foldable plug is good because they come with those really cumbersome big white boxy ones that are hard to move around. Also, when I travel with the three daughters and the wife, I have like a multi-charging system that has five or six different plugs I can put in, two USB, three regular. Then I take this octopus. It's got like a six-foot cable. I'm in the hotel room. I get behind the couch. I plug it in.

throw it over the couch. I got five cables, three iPads, somebody's watched, this thing, that thing, everything's getting charged at once.

I am super dad. It's a job to make sure the devices are charged. I take this work seriously. That's good. Is this serious hard dad work, Juan, you wouldn't understand.

I wouldn't know, yeah. You wouldn't understand. My dad was too early. There was none of this in the 90s. Right. This is amazing. Lon,

you're a gift to humanity. If you were to say, during this holiday season. Here's three holiday films. That are at home alone. Okay. You know, it's not like elf. You know those two.

But here are three holiday films. Wow. Okay. You know, anybody getting in the Christmas spirit, you know, the night before Christmas or the day before, maybe it's Christmas afternoon. There's nothing to do. It's raining outside. The kids want to get in the spirit.

You want to laugh. You want to be touched. What are we going to be? watch. What, what should come up? Mali, I'll give this question to you, too. Favorite holiday films to watch? Just a couple of them. I know, like, what? Well, I watch, you know what I watch every year? It's so terrible

and I love it. I'm not a rom-com person. Throw out everything I've ever said about my action movie fetish and my military fetish and whatever. But I love the holiday. The like, the whole exchange with Jack Black and Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet. I don't even know this one, and I'm a rom-com guy. Oh, my God. Really? I'm so jealous that you get to watch the holiday for the first time.

I was like, I love, Desire's, you know, one of those classic, it's like a throwback. You'd probably like it. It's a total total big school studio rom-com. Great. I love Cameron Diaz. I miss Cameron Diaz.

That was like my quirky girlfriend crush. She's got a new Netflix movie. She's unretiring next year, Cameron Diaz. I'm so excited for you. I love this movie. This is my favorite. What do you got? I can think of it, but I mean,

My personal all-time favorite Christmas movie, the one I usually watch every year, is Scrooge with Bill Murray, the Christmas Carol take. But it's sort of, he's the Scrooge character. It's very funny. Great cast. Carol Kane is the Ghost of Christmas Present. 1988. Yeah, Richard Donner, Bobcat Goldthwaite's in this movie. Alfred Woodard, great cast.

It's really funny. And, yeah, it's a, you know, it's a recognizable take on the Charles Dickens Christmas Carol, but with a very, like 90s Bill Murray This is the Bill Murray era I love because I just watch I told you I did what about Bob Girls make crazy. Love that one. Love that one. Every time we have dinner, they go

Dad, don't start doing mm. And I go Mmm. Mmm. This corn is fresh shot? Would you like some more salad, Bob? Yeah. Pilot high and deep. Can you get the tomatoes off there? What about Bob? Have you seen it, Molly? You've mentioned it so many times

And I was trying to remember this the other day I was talking to my kid And I was like, there's some movie that Jason Always brings up and then usually Nick jumps in I don't want to oversell it But then we're watching it We're watching it

We're watching it And we watched Because they love that film so much I said you want to watch another one That's just as good And we watched Groundhog Day Which delivers

I mean Four six to 12 year old girls And their dads from the 80s I mean it just is a bullseye What about Bob and Groundhog Day it's just amazing a perfect capper for that trilogy

I think would be would be Scrooge would be the that's the Christmas one to add on to add on time I can't play them stripes yet but I always love stripes as a kid because it had a little bit of risk

and that was like one of my first what's that? I say it's not that bad I feel like within a few years you could probably show them stripes yes but stripes to me this was the first time I was ever like, because what year did Stripes come out?

Oh, 80. It might be an overshare. 81 or 82. I scroll down a little bit. 81. So when I saw stripes, you know, in that time period, and I think I saw it with the family, there were a couple of scenes where men and women were interacting in a very flirtatious. Yeah.

It's got that national lampoon, you know, it's like that era. I was like, whoa. It was the first time I was like, chicks. I was like a 12 year old boy like whoa I like that I don't know what I like but there's something going on here

that I'm kind of digging and that was my like little it's funny all the stuff that I grew up Nick is like oh no it's just and he's like oh

there is a bit we grew up watching on TV like that was on TBS and then now when you watch it when you rewatch it and streaming on Netflix or HBO or something you're like oh my God there are boobs

and also the F word. Like, I didn't know there's like a huge F bomb in big. Oh, yeah. Oh, right. It does have a bomb. Because like they didn't, that wasn't on TBS when we watched it on TV growing up. And then I've showed it to my son and he was one big F bomb. Oops.

Yeah. Oh, the TV show Wednesday has that bombs? No, space balls. Space balls. I remember from being a kid, I think that was the first F word I ever heard was when Rick Moran. Did you watch this Wednesday yet? That everyone's talking about.

I watched Wednesday. I thought it was all right. Okay for a six year old. Okay for a 12 year old? what do you think? Definitely okay for a 12-year-old. Six-year-old, I don't know if it's inappropriate or if they just, I don't, I think it might be a little bit past them. The 12-year-old will probably like it. It's like, it's what if you put Wednesday Adams in like a Riverdale? Like, it's very much a CW show plus Adams family together is Wednesday. People are freaking out about the woman in this,

the young actress. Yeah, I don't know if she's young or not. She's 20. She's like a baby. Yeah. And there's some dance scene that went viral. I see it all over TikTok and everywhere. And this is a dance scene that she's doing that's an homage to the original Wednesday. It's just a weird. It's the cramps song, Gougu Muck,

which is like this rockabilly song from the 80s. And she's just doing this very weird dance to it, like a Wednesday Adams thing. But then at one point, she does this weird little tap dance move that is, I guess, a reference to the old Adams family TV show and a dance that the Wednesday Adams did. there. So yeah, this is the dance scene.

Is it not like you do this on a TV show knowing that it's going to, everybody's going to imitate it because people want to dance. People love to dance. Jennifer. This is exactly the sort of thing that is breakout. So she choreographed it. Is that true? She choreographed? Yeah. They're saying Jenna Orteig came up with this dance on her own. She's huge and she's going to get huger. Like she is such a big deal right now. Because of this year. She was also in that scream movie that came out earlier. year and that movie X, that sort of indie horror film that was a big hit earlier this year. Right.

So she's like a real breakout sort of horror movie, scream queen 2022. She'll be... Is she better than Christina Ritchie? Well, she's also in this, Ritchie. Ritchie. She plays a teacher. She played a killer Wednesday. I don't remember when that film came out.

The 90s. Wasn't she awesome for Adams families? 91. Yeah, there were two of those Adams families. The family movies that Barry Sondonfeld did in the 90s where Christina Ritchie was the, was Wednesday. But she's in this now. She plays a teacher in the new show. Oh, really?

Yeah, they brought up. Angelica Houston and Christopher Lloyd were also in that. Wow, I forgot. That's going to be a good fault. Tim Burton directed the first four episodes of Wednesday. That's the big draw. What? It's a Tim Burton jam?

The first half. He directed the first half of the episode. Oh, I'm in. I love it. Yeah, people are loving it. It's like a little young for us is what I've heard because it is that kind of CW vibe, but. It's definitely playing to the team. I feel like your 12-year-old is going to go nuts for it.

But, you know, I enjoyed it. Have you liked Veronica Mars or Riverdale or that kind of show? You'll probably like this. Buffy. I'm in. Buffy, sure, exactly. I always say, we do this every week. And every week, I'm like, I'm going to watch all of that.

And then I watch, like, one show the entire week and the rest of the week I go to bed at nine. Someday, I've got a nice long list. One other Christmas movie I was going to mention, just because I feel like it gets, It gets buried under the radar and it's, it's older on Netflix, so it doesn't come up. In 2019, Netflix, there is an animated film called Claws or Klaus. I guess it's Klaus. Oh, yeah, Klaus. Yeah, with J.K. Simmons did a voice, Jason Schwartzman.

It's sort of like an origin story for Santa Claus. Like, it's trying to sort of prequel to like the Santa Claus myth and where Santa came from. The animation is incredible. As you can even see from here, the animation is awesome and really different and interesting looking. But it's a really cool story too. I really like this movie. So this would be a good one for kids around Christmas too. Well, I'm going to go to my movies and films to watch.

And I'm adding Claws. And I'm adding, what was your rom-com? The holiday. Oh, the holiday. Keep it together. It's a classic. It's a good. What about it's a wonderful life?

Should I introduce that to the kid, girls? It's a wonderful life. Do the Christmas story? Do you guys watch the Christmas story? You know how they run that for 24 hours on Christmas Day? We always watch that at least three times. That's the one with the BB gun and put your tongue off. Yeah, he'll shoot your eye out.

Ralphie and shooting either of right, the BB gun. I think if you watch that, they immediately take their tongue and they put it on a pole outside. I know we for sure. I feel like it's a wonderful life is a right passage. You want them to be women, don't you? You want them to be tough. I don't want to take them to the hospital with a rip time.

Nick is like, elf? Hello? Don't worry, Nick. Elf is just like assumed. I own elf. Exclude elf because we know elf is a, yeah. That's the obvious.

Don't say the most obvious one. Because I would say Gremlins, too, but everybody knows Gremlins. A nightmare before Christmas, but everybody knows. Oh, Gremlins occurred during. Oh, Remlins is a Christmas movie. Oh, Remlins is a Christmas movie. It's scary now. When I was in Dallas, I was looking for Art House theaters because I wanted to see the new Spielberg film.

I couldn't get anybody to go with me. 20 people at Thanksgiving, not one person wants to go see this film with me. I want to go. I would have gone. I would have gone. And I look at the movie theater, and they have a Gremlin's. experience where during the film they like Rocky Horror Picture Show do a Gremlin's interactive movie.

Wow. Experience. And so they have a thing where it's Alamo Draft House does. Oh, sure. Yeah. This sounds like that. A Gremlin's movie party. And it's happening like every couple of weeks and it sells out.

here is, yeah, here is what it says. Wait, hold on, I got to find the copy here. Right, here it is. Joe Dante's Gremlins continues to be a pop culture sensation with its darkly funny story of a small town guy who receives by Mullah, which is amazing. A Morgway. A Mugwai?

A mogwai. Maguai, yes. At our Gremlin's movie party, we won't let you tear the place apart or ruin our electronics, but we'll have all kinds of fun props available to help you get in the action, including paper planes to throw around during the kitchen fight and masks so you can choose Team Spike or Team Gizmo.

We just ask that you follow simple rules. Don't get a Maguai, Mogwai wet. Don't expose it to bright light. Don't feed it after midnight. There's that part in Gremlins where they take over a movie theater. So I'm sure the idea is when the gremlins are going crazy in the movie theater, you go crazy in the theater too. I'm sure that's part of the fun.

I have that at the one in the mission. I mean, that sounds so fun. I'll just end with this quick story. In Brooklyn, the Fortway Theater. Kids in Brooklyn are poorly behaved. Saturday afternoon-ish. We go see Rocky. I don't know if it was Rocky or Rocky, too.

It might have been Rocky three with a rushing guy. That's with Mr. T. Four is Dolph Lungren as Ivan Drago. I think it was number two. Three is Mr. T is Clubberlang. Got it. I think it was number two. So we go.

We see this. This is Apollary. Now, this is Brooklyn. A bunch of teenage kids, young adults, you know, whatever. And, you know, this is a very intense movie. So everybody starts chanting, Rocky, Rocky. Somebody jumps up on their seat. They start throwing popcorn.

And right as this kid throws popcorn, you're like, you know, there's going to be a spark in the riot. Somebody's like, shit the, you know, F dad. This is Brooklyn in the 80s. and I kid you not, somebody throws a full big gulp at this kid's head and it makes perfect contact. This kid and everybody around who gets drenched.

At which point, the two ushers come in. What's going on here? Flashlights and then everybody takes their drinks and popcorn and simultaneously throws it at everybody. Sure. And the movie theater is pure chaos

for the last 10 minutes. They can't stop it. They call the cops. They put the lights on and then eventually they stopped the film. It was a freaking riot hilarious. I think we got towards the end. It was, I think we're at the end of the film, but they kind of turned the lights on real quick and the police showed up.

Like, everybody out of the theater. I have never been covered in so much popcorn and drinks and had, it was one of the best experiences of my moment. I mean, listen, you're seeing a Rocky movie. That's fun as hell. That's, that goes with the territory. So fun. Don't go to the movies in Brooklyn if you don't want the Gremlin's interactive experience.

It had to have been three or four. Because you were too young, I feel like. I feel like this would be, this was 81 to 84. It's three. I bet it's clever laying, Mr. T. I bet it's number three. 81 to 85.

I know I was like a young adult and the movie theater eventually became a flea market. And now is a like Chinese food market. Sure. Yeah, all these big movie theaters. And it was one theater originally. And then when I was a kid, it moved to three and five. Yeah, right. When I was growing up, movie theaters used to have one or two screens, and that was it. There was no multiplex.

What they did was they took the balcony and cut it in half, kept the front of the theater. That was theater one, and then the two balconies got cut into theaters two and three. Pretty smart move. All right, everybody. Thanks, long. Thanks, I love having to the next time. The show went far too long, but we're not sorry. All right, and next up is, of course, it's Friday.

It is. So we got OK, Boomer. Rachel is talking to Alex Banks, the founder of the founder behind Through the Noise, and then also the co-founder of Tribe Scaler, through the noise in case you don't know, because you are not Gen. Z is a publication that covers startups NBC without the noise.

See that? See what he did there? You never heard of this publication. Through the noise. Through the noise. Tribescaler uses AI to help users write better and faster, which is all about creating viral hooks and headlines. and Rachel and Alex talked about how he got interested in the VC and startup space and then his own journey to becoming a founder.

The Gen Zs will replace us all. Forget about AI. It's the Gen Zs you got to watch out for. Through the noise. I'll check it out. All right. Enjoy everybody. Enjoy. Okay, Boomer.

I understood the assignment. Today on this segment of OK Boomer. For those of you who are living under a rock, Alex is crazy big over on Twitter. He's at the Alex Banks, but I actually did find him on Twitter. I found him to a great newsletter behind is, you know, the writer behind through the noise and through the noise is a publication. It covers startups and VC without the noise. And I found out you're also a co-founder.

You're the co-founder of Tribe Scalar. And Tribe Scalar uses AI to help people write better and faster, especially if they're looking to create those viable hooks and headlines and it works in seconds. And when I found out you were a founder too, I knew you had to come on the show. So again, thank you so much for joining me. Rachel, it's my pleasure. So I think first things first, we need to dive into, how do you get into this space? Like, I know we're around the same age, and it looks like you, when I did some stocking,

it looks like you kind of jumped right in right after university after you did your master's. I started my degree at Imperial back in September 2021 and realized that, look, I am going down this traditional route, which I thought I was dead set on. I had my sort of path mapped out. I wanted to pursue it with ultimate passion, but then I realized a few months in that, okay, hang on, what if there was a different part, perhaps the side door that could accelerate and perhaps compress timelines? And from there, I realized, man, this game of creating content is something that I want to be part of.

So back in January, I stepped foot in the world of Twitter writing all things, finance frameworks and startups, and really haven't looked back since Rachel. it's been one heck of a right. Wow. And did you do anything like when you were younger that was like entrepreneurial? Why finance? I feel like starting a newsletter isn't necessarily something and becoming, honestly, I feel like I can label you as like a writer at this point.

That doesn't seem like a very nautful path. It doesn't. It doesn't. And to be counted with you, you know, finance and this concept of money was something that I've been enamored with for, well, since a very young age. I remember being six years old. And in my primary school library, there was this big book, hardback, all on money. And I remember that you could only rent it out for one week at a time.

And I made sure that I'd be every kid to the line in that library queue each week to be the first one to get it. Because I was just fascinated with, you know, what is this sort of foreign object to me that at the time, you know, I had my little piggy bank and I sort of saw it rise as I got my little bit of pocket change throughout the years. But I thought, you know, what is this, what is this commodity? And over the years, you know, you learn to respect it. It's, you know, very much a wonderful force to, you know, satisfy wants and needs and ultimately unlock a lot of opportunity and experience in life. And I think that's what it's all about. So from then a very young age to now, you know, studying economics and then finance to then going to, I guess, appreciate it from a high level and go, right, you know, how can I use attention to get capital and ultimately unlock a lot of economic opportunity? I'm sure that's what we'll go on and chat about with respect to, you know,

Tribescaler through the noise and seeing a lot of, a lot of opportunity there that is yet to be untapped. Got you. And if I'm correct, through the noise came before Tribescaler cracked. Yeah, yeah. So here's a funny thing. Both of them are actually running in tandem since the start. So I began creating in January of 2022.

And, you know, I immediately realized, look, there is an abundance of information online, right? And Signal is more important than ever in an era where we're overloaded with content. You know, if we think about all these short-term dopamine-driven feedback loops that are ever present in our world right now, you know, TikToks, reels, everything in between where, whilst they can be an excellent force for good and, you know, education, they're here to entertain, they can also, if you're, if used incorrectly, you know, they can do some bad things. So I think my impetus to start through the noise was going, look, there is this abundance of information online. How can I give you a signal my dissected thoughts and pieces one time a week in the essence of a newsletter and give that to you delivered straight to your inbox in a sort of two to

three minute read? You know, this is my learnings that I'm going as a founder and as a creator. And if I can share that to a group of like-minded individuals who are in the same, and I can help shorten their time frames, then I can put my head down at ease it, like Rachel. I love that. That's super awesome. And I noticed that you used Beehive,

and I've been talking about Beehive for a while on this podcast. I think it's so interesting that somebody has not only come out of Morning Brew, which feels like the Masters at Newsletters, but coming and now, you know, really shucking up the world of the other newsletter platforms out there, and it feels like it almost came out of nowhere. Have you always been on Beehive or were. you originally on a different platform? You know, I actually wasn't.

I started with Twitter's native newsletter platform. Yes. And I think whilst it is an excellent facilitator, a frictionless facilitator of acquiring new subscribers, I ultimately don't think that the infrastructure they have is suited to, ultimately scaling and growing a real newsletter. So, you know, they have this wonderful integration where you can have a wonderful integration where you can have a one-click sign up with your Twitter profile, which is wonderful for capturing that top of the funnel subscriber base. But if you want an actual platform to design and scale

through recommendations and having a great mechanism and writing board to actually ideate and create on, then Beehive is absolutely the place to go. And I say that out of no affiliation, but pure splendor and enjoyment for using the product, like I've got. huge amounts of value from using it and their recommendation features. And yeah, that would be my, my number one recommendation to anyone who's thinking about starting a newsletter in that, look,

perhaps you can use the best of both. Use the review integration on Twitter. Start capturing all of these, all of these subscribers and then create on Beehive and share what you love. Okay, so you think that's a good strategy then, I guess. We do, we have a review newsletter that goes out once a week for the speaking startups. And I've noticed that the clicker,

it gets, it's so interesting how big the reaches. And the same thing goes for LinkedIn's newsletter plugin. I actually love that you're saying that. So, like, grow on one platform and then when you want to get a little bit more creative with it, maybe switch to something that offers a little bit more in that sector. And you do call yourself a creator. Is there any other platform that you create on? Or is the newsletter really like your main thing? I know, like Harry Stebbings, for example, is like huge on TikTok now, too, which is really cool to see. Are you on any other platform? Yeah, no, listen, I started Twitter native. I've gone onto the newsletter and I think video is going to be my next adventure. So I actually just uploaded my first, my first TikTok and

short today. So I'm going to be using some similar growth strategies that I employed with, with Twitter and seeing where we go over the next year. So I'm super excited for all things short form video and seeing where we land. That is so cool. And then moving on to your, the other side of you, which is Tribe Scalar. I love this idea. I'm really excited by AI. I know a ton of people. It's a pretty,

I didn't know that it was a, I guess a controversial topic. I've always been a fan of Descript. And Descript is what it is to edit my podcast. We don't use it at the speaking startups, but I used it when I had my own personal one. And they came out with an AI integration and it rocked. And that was kind of like my first intro being like,

oh my gosh, this is so freaking helpful. So when I saw Tribe Scalar, I was like, great, like, writing copy. Obviously, like, they always say if you go to a marketing class for especially doing videos into what form content, they say like that first sentence right off the bat if you're saying a TikTok, like, what is that hook? And having tribes go there to, you know, help make those better and faster is really interesting. Who did you co-found this with and why? Sure. I'll give you a little bit of a breakdown. So Paul Graham famously said that, look, the best way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas, is actually to look for problems, preferably problems that you have yourself.

And I think for me, when I started creating content on Twitter back in January, you know, getting eyeballs on your social media content is extremely difficult. You know, I would hit publish and my tweets would sit in the dark for days. And to say the least, you know, I struggle for the first four months creating online. And even if you write the greatest content on the internet, you'll still face the same challenge, which is how can I get it seen by millions? Whereas looking back, it's actually quite easy to see why. So in December 2021, it's sort of where I sort of started this creating passion. I was almost, I was doing a little bit too much gear gathering, Rachel. You know, I was sort of, you know, how can I have my systems in place, my frameworks.

in place to write great concert when actually I should have just dive straight in in the deep end, which I did back in January. Anyway, I decided to try my hand writing on Twitter, and, you know, I was totally crowded by imposter syndrome. You know, I was, I'd been lurking for the years prior. And shortly after I made that switch from consumer to creator, I cross past with a fellow Alex, Alexander Leavaghe, he's from, from Norway. I mean, the internet is such a wonderful facilitator of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of

relationships. Anyway, both of us were new to the platform, yet I was immediately blown away by his data expertise and deep knowledge of AI. Needless to say, we got on like a house on fire. And, you know, we both shared this deep curiosity for what made the original gangsters of Twitter blow up, right? Yeah. 5,000 likes, 10,000 likes, 50,000 likes. What was the secret source to virality? And ultimately, I wanted it. And that was when the aha moment kicked in in that, look, the hook for your content is the most important factor in its success, right? If you have a mediocre hook and great content, your content will just sit in the dark. If you have a great hook and mediocre content, then your content will get some eyeballs,

but you're not following through. If you have a great hook and great content, that's the Wombo combo. That's what you're looking for. So the hook is the ultimate factor of whether your thread succeeds or fails. That's with respect to Twitter. It might be a YouTube video. It might be an email newsletter. It might be the headline.

And so that was when Alexander and I ultimately sat down and said, look, what product, or at least what form will this take? So we spoke to hundreds of friends on Twitter. I was lucky enough to have met some fascinating and wonderful creators. And we sat down, got the drawing board, and ultimately released Tribescaler back in mid-September. So we're two and a half months in. and we're very much our sort of big picture vision to cut a long story short is to ultimately build the first digital second brain combining your notes with AI. So how can we be a facilitator of your unique perspective, not just the AI's, but all your notes, all your resources, all your ideas that you've collected throughout time, how can we amalgamate these and allow you to share them with ultimate pleasure and efficiency and layer AI into that to make it way, way quicker and way better.

So are people currently using Tribe Scalar for writing their tweets, especially those threads? Correct, yeah. So we've just passed 200, 200 customers, which has been super, super cool to see. And we've got a, yeah, people are writing their hooks with it, their tweets with it. We're going across to LinkedIn, content creation as well. So we're exploring these different adjacent markets that we can find our way into. Gotcha. That's super interesting. I love seeing things like you're not trying to take, I think when people are afraid of AI, I think a lot of times it's because they don't want a computer to take that complete creative control. So I like that you guys are kind of not going about it as saying, like this is a tool in your toolbox. This isn't like something that is a replacement. It's a supplement. It's something that can help your content be even better. 100%. We see it to augment your creativity, not replace it.

Yeah. And I definitely see that happening on LinkedIn. It's funny that you say that because I think LinkedIn gets a bad rap. I personally don't do anything on LinkedIn, but I do see these massive, massive stories of growth happening over there. And it's funny because I, as much as I say, I don't like love LinkedIn. I'm a very big advocate. I'm like, like LinkedIn's so cringy. It's so cheesy. But from like a growth perspective, I've had to use LinkedIn and like pretty aggressively had to use LinkedIn in college. And every job search you have, you know what I mean? It's kind of like that aggressive push on LinkedIn. And it's one of those social media sites. Like if anybody's ever been unemployed, you know how often you're checking LinkedIn, you know, waiting, looking for that next job. So the eyeballs that are going to LinkedIn, those are a different level of dialed in compared to Twitter where if I'm on Twitter, I'm kind of passively scrolling.

But if I'm looking at something from a career perspective, I can imagine having things like a good hook where I'm really dialed into that person's content. That matters, like immensely. And for tribes, you guys said you recently hit over 200 customers. That's awesome. What's your business model? Yeah, so we are currently consumer SaaS. So we have a subscription model that we're running at the moment with a couple of plans.

One is Grow, the other is Pro. Well, obviously, grow. You have X number of credits that you can use each month to generate content. And Pro is an infinite amount. So you can hit generate all you like and you can get endless ideas sparking your your creative output. And at least how we see that, how we see that growing, Rachel,

we're big advocates for increasing your, at least increasing the bang for the buck that you get. So expanding our suite of tools that you can use and employ for your creative output, whether that be, you know, something as small as writing a tweet, as something as big as being informed on the global markets,

right? How can we tailor these pieces to a very select persona, from content creating all the way to, you know, perhaps even a trading floor down the line. Yeah. I could even see this happening or being a great tool. I go to like CPG websites, for example, all the time. And the copy that's used and the hook that's even used on websites has been something that has been increasingly on my mind lately because I'm always saying it's not just the packaging anymore. It's like what's like the next step, like after the packaging is good and after, you know, that consumer product really shows like,

okay, this is usable. What are they saying? And I think really great kind of unique company that does this is my brothers wear these shorts. They're called bird dogs. And they're just funny. They have a really funny, they have really funny taglines over on their social media.

I know, maybe it's not even their social media team doing it, but I do notice that creators, at least that are promoting bird dogs, are really funny. And it's all with that first sentence where I'm like, They're just out of pocket. So excited to see where this is going on so many different aspects. And if people wanted to find you or find Tribescaler, where would they go?

Yeah. So Trib Scalers at Tribescaler on all socials. And if you want to get in touch with me, I'm at the Alex Banks on most platforms. Amazing, Alex. Thank you so much for joining. And like I said, super fun to see where this all goes. Rachel, it's been a real pleasure joining you today. Cheers.